That Savage Water

by Matthew R. Loney

  And if anything goes wrong?

  I’ve got to try, Cam. You know this is important to me.

  Alexis’ room smells rusty like sick. Daylight filters between cracks in the orange curtains, dusty air-con sitting broken on the window ledge, her in a dirty white tank top sprawled on the mattress, breathing at least. Wooden door to the bathroom is open so walk across the cool tile, check if her water bucket is empty.

  Whisper – I’m going to the end of the hall to fill your bucket. Do you want me to bring you anything? – thinking, damn this is bad timing, and her so afraid to drink the sadhu’s water in the first place, believing it was full of parasites. Had said – This is a really shit idea, Cam. Look at the water. I don’t care if he’s holy or not – then the sadhu dipping his cup into the basin, holding it out first to Ari, then me, then a family of Indians as we waited for Alexis to decide. The sadhu’s dark eyes and beard, loincloth, painted red forehead and Ari looking at him like he was really incarnate, with that full open stare like he wanted to put himself inside the sadhu’s body to feel what it was like to actually live that other person, saying as he watched – What little we can get away with. A cup, a bowl, a stick of incense…Namaste – Always that guess inside making you wonder – what if I just left it all? – if I abandoned myself, joined that bony sadhu on his mat to meditate until the monsoon, gathered my things like a turtle and camped for ten years in solitude beneath the nearest sandalwood tree? Knowing that’s the better choice, but that catch: a barb on a catheter.

  Fill bucket from the faucet at end of the hallway, window open out onto the street with sacks of onions being unloaded. Tiny lizard – a soft translucent comma above the tap – then a Sikh man with blue turban stepping out of his room with his bucket. Smell of his oily beard in the heat, like wet coins, wet cardboard. Don’t know if I could convince Ari to stay, with the time it takes to get to Jaipur and him feeling all fervently reborn since meeting one of Manobhava’s disciples on Miramar beach, a French kid named Gilles whose eyes had said anything but trust me. Alexis and I swimming in the tumble-brown surf while the cattle chewed their cud under the palm trees, Ari standing waist-deep in the shallows with the French kid, saying – This is so interesting, because I’ve been hoping to find someone who knew a guru. Manobhava, you say, is a good teacher? I’m looking for someone with deep integrity, an open soul… – like a wound or a jar, I wondered. Open shifts into various forms.

  Sikh man tilts his enormous beard at the tap, me walking back to Alexis’ room with full, sloshing bucket. Don’t know if I blame the sadhu entirely, Ari and I both fine after drinking his sanctified water. The mind projects what we already believe. Then her telling that awful news about her failed attempt and Ari saying – Now, that’s what I’d have done. Nothing like bumming through India to help you forget your own misery – And Alexis with that look of wanting to say, shut up, you can’t possibly know anything about it, so I said – Just the next thing. After something like that, just have to do the next, normal thing – That was in Varca where we first met, Alexis’ hair in tattered red dreads, pupils black and open, and the sense that she had wandered away from something horrible and was trying her hardest not to remember where it was.

  Ari puts on sunglasses – That French kid, Gilles. Such a young guy but he knew so much. It’s amazing! He went to Manobhava’s ashram in Jaipur at seventeen, left his whole life back in France and said he never looked back.

  Is that what he did.

  I’m serious, Cam. If he can do it, why shouldn’t we? You and I both know this is how we should live. It’s just a matter of finding the balls to take the first step.

  Thinking, that’s fine for you to say, then suddenly being hit with such a surge of jealousy that I look away because I know what this is all about, and then with the nerve to talk of finding the balls. That’s fine for you to say.

  Indian man, slim with black moustache, brings breakfast plates and sets them on the table. Bead of sweat polishes his jaw on its way down from his brown temple; hesitant smile apologizes for bad English – Okay everything, sir?

  Then Ari says he wants another cup of coffee and the man backing away from the table like he’s been told by his boss this is how you serve them, no matter what they ask for.

  See that? That’s the problem right there! We’ve captured him. I’d get my own goddamn coffee but these structures are in place to prevent me from doing it. I’m talking about leaving all this behind. Manobhava’s teachings will take us this direction. I want you to come, Cam. Why not come?

  What about Alexis?

  I don’t know why you take such responsibility for her. Honestly, Cam, she’ll be alright. India is full of sick people. Shitty thing, though I’d have run the same way if I was her. But this is about something bigger, Cam. It’s a question of priorities.

  Priorities. That widening tower built too fragile at the base, tapering outward into a precipice, vertigo, adrenaline of overhang, threatening crack.

  It’s what you do when someone’s sick, Ari. Would be the same for you. But I’m happy for you, I’m sure Manobhava’s what you’re looking for.

  Man with moustache sets coffee on the table.

  Well, anyways – slips feet out of his sandals – There’s no convincing me otherwise. I’m leaving for Jaipur tonight.

  Our bare feet on the concrete nearly touching, rumble of army truck below on the street, that constant friction where our insides meet weather, senses, chances to abandon for good our lives boxed up in storage rooms, everything planned on going back to, vanished.

  Not vanished. Deserted.

  How long are you planning to stay there?

  A year. Maybe two. I don’t know. There’s no point staying for less than that. Transforming yourself the way Manobhava teaches isn’t some spectator sport. I know how much you like to dip your feet in to gauge the temperature.

  You can’t blame me for being cautious.

  That’s it! That’s your weakness, you finally admit it. As much as I admire you for everything else, you’re too damn cautious.

  Precipice. Flailing hooves grasp for purchase on the crumbling rock edge, whole herds falling through mid-air. A shower of wool sprays over the cliff side.

  Water bucket back to Alexis’ room, her meager body curled beneath the mosquito net, condensation slinking down the sides of a water bottle into rings. From the doorway, smell of sick, stale heat of a dark room at noon.Women from the market outside sold all the goods from their tables and now load empty baskets onto carts attached to donkeys, morning earnings tucked away safely in the blouses of their saris. Over a billion scrounging daily while a humid breeze creeps along a dirty, paint-chipped windowpane down to the sweat line where it releases its coolness.

  Cam? – Alexis’ dry-throated murmur – Can you get my sheet? It slipped off the end of the bed.

  Yeah. Filled your bucket too.

  I haven’t felt this horrible since I left to come here. It was a mistake to trust that sadhu.

  Ari and I are fine, though. It couldn’t have been him. Must have picked up something else.

  No. That’s not how these places are. He was there to steal our money and you and Ari walked me right into it. You’ve always kidded yourself that way. Especially with Ari. But that’s how we survive, I guess. That’s how we get away with standing in the middle of this huge pile of shit thinking we’re completely safe when we’re not. No one is and that’s the goddamned rule.

  Sikh man passes the open door, glancing with turbaned head into the room. Pauses with bucket then continues down the hallway.

  Ask him if he has a cigarette.

  I’ll come back later to check on you.

  Ask him for a cigarette, Cam. I’ll share the smoke with you.

  Do you want food?

  Oh, just fuck off then.

  Shutting the door, fresh breeze of the hallway. But her face, clamped teeth of devastation like a bear trap. Can’t sa
y what I would do in similar circumstance, surviving your suicide and your own father finding you in a bathtub of blood, but would certainly drop the floor out from under you – that damned eternal precipice, wide eyes, teeth tongue teeth, rabid frothing lips. Can’t say what I’d do or who I’d blame. Alexis telling Ari and I the whole story at the guesthouse in Varca, me thinking – That’s fine, we all travel for different reasons – Isn’t always with obvious purpose but everyone comes to India for one reason or another perspective. Maybe just to jump the fissure and for God’s sake, what’s wrong with fleeing if it saves you?

  Ari, glancing at the clock on the inside wall, says – The train doesn’t leave for another four hours. You could change your mind. I want to give you that option.

  Say – That’s fine. But I don’t want to leave Alexis alone with all that to deal with.

  There you go, being cautious again, Cam. I hate to think what’ll happen if you don’t start saying fuck it. The deep end is shallower than you think. But hey, that’s your decision to make.

  Dark eyelashes, hint of Spaniard slouched in his plastic chair looking over his bronzed shoulder towards the railing. That envious leanness to his movements, like a man being trained to fight or jump hurdles. Tough gristle of sinew snagged between dogs’ teeth, thigh bone clamped in salivating jaws.

  In Varca: Alexis, Ari and I in the guesthouse restaurant overlooking the beach. Three beers sweat their rings onto the plastic tablecloth, TV in the corner of the ceiling reporting a family of Christian missionaries burned alive in their car by Hindus in the eastern state of Orissa. Motive cited as forcefully trying to convert the poor. Quick smack over the sucking fuselage of a horse fly. Note: Desire to eradicate our annoyances, dreams of peace without the bother, cremation fires licking through the tough-skinned corpses of obstinacy. How a handkerchief over the nose easily blocks the acrid smoke of burning rubber, burning flesh.

  Ari looks away – So simple just to demolish your misery, isn’t it? Just put your neck through the noose and pull tight.

  Or crash the car, he means, swallow pills, aim the barrel, slice the skin.

  Alexis, wide-eyed, says – I’d dare you to try. Takes more guts than you’ve got – then pulls up the sleeves of her cotton shirt revealing without warning the still-red intersections on her wrists, as if to say don’t underestimate the balls it takes to end it.

  Ari saying – Now, that’s what I’d have done. Nothing like tramping through India to help you forget your own misery – But Alexis with that look of wanting to say shut up, you can’t possibly know anything about it and Ari and I wondering why or how or if anyone knew she was here or if she ought to be. Said she left Toronto a day out of hospital, flew into Delhi, hitchhiked with two Australians to Agra, Kanpur, Varanasi, but said the food sat strangely in her stomach and, besides, she didn’t like the feeling north Indian men gave her. Dirty auburn hair matted back in salted dreads, angular face with sly nose, cigarette dangling from lips as she bends to rip loose the threads unravelling her skirt. Then wondering what torrent of desperation had carried her to the brink then pooled there as she surveyed her dismal hellscape then swept her over from behind. And why, as she was falling, didn’t her arms suddenly flail and grab hold of a tree root, crumbling overhang and wrists trailing blood down to her elbows, not pulling with last strength back over the ledge?

  I don’t know what possessed her – Ari says as the rickshaw weaves through dusty traffic from Panaji out to Maruti temple, the driver chewing betel nut, red saliva filling the sacks of his cheeks then spouting from his mouth a thick splatter onto hot pavement – I’m sorry, Cam, but I just don’t understand it. What drives a person to that?

  Probably wanted to break free of her container – then thinking why all this to enclose us in the first place? Why so many walls and edges, damned precipice you either fall over or turn back at?

  Then him looking at me, long with deep, sunned face, unshaven black scruff of the subcontinent traveller – Cam, I don’t live by those rules. You see the way the men hold hands here? We’d think little or nothing about such preferences if our society simply ignored them. You’re too damn careful. I hate to think where that prevents you from going.

  Rickshaw halts by the base of the hill. Sun hits the dry stone in full glare and blaze, earth strewn with yellow boulders, mix of shrubs, clump grasses, heat and distant knock of cowbells. Two boys crouch in the ditch and catch crickets by hand, hold them up to their noses, then release them back into grass. Maruti temple perched high on the hilltop with a granite trail winding upward and behind, a lone sadhu cross-legged beneath an overhang. Climbing in the noontime heat, wondering about Alexis and how many of us stare out over the rims of escarpments onto weaving river valleys below, haze of smoke, exhaust, precarious footholds, whatever it is that keeps us from vaulting over.

  Ari stops beside a boulder, looks at me, then drinks from the water bottle. Beads of sweat on his upper lip collide with the plastic opening, rhythmic gulps of his Adam’s apple, glint of his saliva as he passes the bottle to me.

  I say – I want to get to the top before long. Let’s not lose momentum or there’ll be no place to go when the sun is down.

  Late afternoon light filtered dark through closed curtains. Mosquito net pulled to one side of the bed, Alexis sprawled, bottom sheet tangled around her feet like a collapsed shadow, revealing the dirty mattress.

  Cam? – pale voice from the pillow – Cam, I feel so horrible. I shouldn’t have come here. I brought all my miserable shit with me, just clung to everything, Christ. Did you bring a cig?

  No.

  Has Ari left?

  Not until evening. His train leaves at six, I could tell him to come say goodbye, he’s only up on the roof.

  Don’t do that – then the gentle hush of footsteps in the hallway, the Sikh on his way to the water tap – Has Ari said anything to you?

  About Manobhava? He’s convinced it’s what he’s supposed to do. He’s asked me to go with him but I didn’t think you could manage…

  Not about that – Alexis pauses under the distant rumble of an army truck, bringing hand to her forehead, wipes sweat, eyes half-hidden behind fissured wrists – I slept with him, Cam. I didn’t know if I should tell you.

  Crack.

  Instant in mid-air when all four appendages thrash at sky, cantilevered cliff side pulls away, neck muscles taught with impending skull smash. Ten seconds of free fall, that mountain range rising from haze, heat of the rain-starved plains and city exhaust smogging the distance all the way from Panaji to Pune, Mumbai, Silvassa, Ahmadabad, Jaipur, Delhi, then north to the Himalayas, the vagrant borders of Kashmir.

  When? – I ask.

  The night we all first met in Varca. I went to his room when you left and he told me to come in. He must’ve felt sorry for me, I don’t know. I shouldn’t have told you but I thought it’s better you know. You don’t hide that sort of thing from a friend.

  Windowsill vibrates the dead carriage of a horse fly, brittle paint chips, dust-drift, army truck emptied of onions pulls away into the swell of Panaji.

  You think you have a right to be upset, Cam?

  I’m not upset…

  Because it’s times like this… – she says – when you’re the loneliest, when you’ve exhausted all your other options…that nothing at all really feels like the better option. Goddammit, I shouldn’t have come here. I know that now. There were a million things I could have done but I came thinking somehow the heat and the mess would distract me. And now being alone in this room for hours and hours…as bad as it was before, this is worse. I know he means something to you, Cam, but he felt sorry for me, I’m sure that’s why he did it. It meant something to me too, just to have that body. And it means something that I can tell you…

  I’ll come back to check on you. I’ll tell Ari you’re feeling better. He’d be happy to know that.

  Jesus, Cam. I just thought I should tell you before he left.
Bring me some water when you come back. And for Christ’s sake, find me a cigarette.

  Condensation maps highways down the plastic bottle, Ari lifting his shirt, wiping forehead sweat. His taught abdomen, a line of black hair from his navel until waistband. Behind his head in a breezeless sky, two black pinpoints circling, their hawk-eyes spotting field mice. Ari says – We’ll be back before it’s dark. Not to worry – then put my lips to the mouth of the bottle, wet of his saliva, that constant sun and the feeling that sooner or later all of our subterrains eventually bubble to the surface, and why not here in India where it’s easy to get lost and change forms? Hand the bottle back and watch him drink a second time – There.

  An hour of climbing later, arriving at Maruti temple with a view stretching out over the boiling plains, the sprawled smudge of Panaji then the whole vast linear ocean in the distance, all those hidden troughs and ridges that tower beneath the water in submerged marine continents. Us on the stone railing that perimeters the temple, legs dangling above scrub weeds, a child tapping our shoulders, holding marigold garlands with one hand, and the bells from the temple in the background. Priest wakes the monkey god Maruti from his sleep and gathers handfuls of herbs from the glacial streams that spill from inside icy Himalayan crests, faithful devotee of Rama, kind simian of loyalty and thunderbolt. Boy with marigolds lingers behind the shade line, shadow from the roof cutting across his bare feet, brilliant loops of tangerine over his arms, then turning away, ducks inside the temple bordered by tall grass. Ari looks at me, smiles, moves his knee until it rests against mine.

  Says – What little we need, don’t you think, Cam? Isn’t this what it all boils down to? Just two simple creatures, happy in their circumstances, contented apes with their arms around each other, surveying the jungle?

  How you put things – I say – makes me think there’s something meaningful under all this mess. I’m glad you brought that water bottle. It’s difficult to think ahead sometimes. I don’t mean you can never not plan for things. But during the day, with the heat…